Out to Lunch with Fergus Henderson

Fergus Henderson, most genial of men, is the eccentric British chef who pioneered “nose-to-tail eating,” or the unsqueamish pleasure in the entire animal. “If you kill an animal, you should eat all of it,” he explained over lunch in his gentle way. “It’s only polite.”

Let the record show that Mr. Henderson is worshipped by master chefs—Mario Batali and David Chang among them. When Anthony Bourdain dined at Henderson’s now fabled St. John restaurant, in the City of London, he swooned in a form of religious epiphany, as foodies are wont to do; while A. A. Gill most unusually reversed his negative review in The Sunday Times to pronounce that Henderson’s traditional farmyard fare now left him in tears of wonder.

I met our man for lunch at his favorite spot—timeless Sweetings, one of the oldest fish restaurants in London, close to St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Aaaah,” he said in anticipation as the last of the season’s gull’s eggs were served. “Such beautiful things.”

A Hogarthian figure behind owlish glasses, he would prefer, one senses, to have lived in another century. Dinner isn’t of much interest to him, but lunch is a celebration—“the main meal of the day,” he enthused. His breakfast is admittedly unhealthy—an espresso, a glass of the digestive liqueur Fernet-Branca, and a cigarette. “But it fires up the engine, improves the humors.” He enjoys the ritual tradition of midmorning elevenses: seedcake and a glass of sherry. “Keeps you going till lunch,” he said.

His main course at Sweetings was surprisingly modest. Scampi, chips, and peas—comforting seaside food that he orders every time. We enjoyed it along with a cooling silver tankard of black velvet (Guinness and champagne), followed by a Chablis Premier Cru. “It’s a happy wine,” he explained when its fate hung in the balance as he tasted it very carefully. “Cheers!”

Now 50, Fergus (who is married to a chef; they have three teenage children) has battled with Parkinson’s for many years, but he has always been extraordinarily stoic about it. “If you get angry or upset,” he said, “it would be winning.”

In 2005, however, he was successfully treated with innovative D.B.S. (deep brain stimulation). “It’s a little scary,” he added, and laughed. “But it’s unbelievable! It totally transformed my life.”

Fergus Henderson trained initially to become an architect (both his parents were architects), but he says that he was so disillusioned with the terrible sandwiches he ate each day over lunch in his office, he took up cooking. His recipes in The Complete Nose to Tail, released in the U.S. by Ecco this month, tell us how far he’s come. There’s stuffed lambs’ hearts; braised squirrel; haggis; pig’s cheek confit and dandelion; pig’s head and potato pie; dried salted pig’s liver, radishes, and boiled eggs; and, among much else that was beginning to remind me of Sweeney Todd, blood cake and fried eggs.

“You will need to ask your butcher for the blood. It may be difficult to obtain, but it can be got.”

“Isn’t the blood rather pagan?” I asked.

“We don’t drink it out of skulls,” he replied. “It’s all about flavor and texture.”

His signature dish is slowly roasted bones. “Yum!” he exclaimed. “I would suggest that you scoop out the bone marrow onto a slice of toast with parsley salad on top, and, of course, sea salt. You can construct your own happy bone moment.”

Fergus Henderson’s cooking is not, then, for vegetarians. His sensual heterodoxy is unapologetically politically incorrect and spiced with sly irony. “How do you know who vegans are?” he asked me.

“How?”

“They tell you!”

His deep-fried pig tails are also very popular. “They’re wonderfully crispy—a meaty purgatory between fat and flesh similar to the pig’s muzzle and cheek. Then there’s the bone to gnaw. Kids love them, too!”

He also enjoys cooking and eating the hearts of various animals—lamb, ox, duck, squirrel (though not of the endangered red squirrel). “The heart expresses the very nature of the beast in a way that the fillet or leg doesn’t,” he explained. “Ox heart is a revelation. Trust me.”

“What won’t you eat?” I asked. “Where do you draw the line?”

“It’s purely emotional and irrational. But you just don’t want some things. Lung is a bit too spongy for me. But I love tripe. Tripe lifts your spirits. I’ll eat a bull’s heart, but draw the line at eating its penis. Eyes don’t appeal, either, or any animal caught in an open sewer.”

On the other hand, I put it to the good Fergus, we humans are head-to-toe animals. Why not add human beings to his tempting head-to-tail menu?

“Homo sapiens grill?” he pondered. His answer—thank God—was absolutely not, while he conveyed the suspicion that unfit Homo sapiens on the plate, sprinkled with a little parsley, would be more “umm” than “yum.”